Kimberly-Clark, a global leader in providing essentials for a better life, knows that its business is built on a personal touch. The 140-year-old company recently underwent a significant transition—tapping new social technologies to help employees collaborate and connect more closely with the 1.3 billion people that use its products each day. Now, Kimberly-Clark can engage more closely with consumers, improve its product offerings, and increase customer loyalty.

"Social, for Kimberly-Clark, is just amazing," explains Mike McCranie, Global Director, Information Technology. "With a social network, we can have teams working in Buenos Aires, Argentina collaborate with teams in Sydney, Australia; Bangkok, Thailand with Dallas, Texas. Social makes this huge world we live in much, much smaller." With a private employee network—based on salesforce.com technologies—it’s easier for the company’s 57,000+ employees to share information on deal progress and support issues, help each other, and move the business forward.

The employee network was so successful that the company decided to apply the same listening outside its walls. Using Radian6, Kimberly-Clark talks to consumers, identifies influencers, establishes benchmarks, and builds community. "This gives us a new way to engage with our customers," says McCranie. "We can talk to them where they are already talking." Some of Kimberly-Clark’s products receive 30,000+ mentions on Twitter each month, so the company also uses Radian6 to build R&D reports identifying product issues.

“Our salespeople have not only adapted to Salesforce, they want to be using it.”

When it wanted to add a layer of agility around its existing, back-office systems like SAP, Kimberly-Clark looked to salesforce.com again. With Salesforce Platform, Kimberly-Clark developed mobile apps to let salespeople work from anywhere, at any time. Users can add data to the ERP system while on the road. The company’s Kimberly-Clark Professional Healthy Workplace app for iPads lets the B2B team track cleaning projects and share progress with customers in real time.

McCranie continues, "In order to continue to grow for the next 140 years, we have to have social and mobile. Whether it's our B2B businesses or our B2C businesses—it’s incredibly important that we continue to use the power of social networks to be competitive."

Learn how American Express uses the Customer Success Platform to keep the company connected and sharing information. Sales Cloud helps American Express generate complete views of customers. Chatter and Salesforce Mobile keep reps informed on the go.

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